Many High Park fire residents are staying through winter

By Pat Ferrier The Associated Press

Posted:
11/18/2012 09:43:40 PM MST

LIVERMORE -- Two days after the High Park fire roared through the 12th filing in Glacier View Meadows, PJ and Charles Maybury went shopping for a camper. It was Sunday and the RV dealerships were closed. But hunting for a temporary home helped ease the bitter loss the Mayburys suffered when the fire claimed their home on the southern edge of the Livermore subdivision.

Today, that 30-foot travel trailer sits in the middle of the Mayburys' property, surrounded by blackened trees, flattened ground where neighbors' homes once stood, and a landscape forever changed by the 87,000-acre lightning-sparked inferno that destroyed 259 homes, innumerable outbuildings and claimed one life.

The Mayburys and many families like them in Glacier View and the Rist and Poudre canyons plan to hunker down in campers, garages and other temporary dwellings on their burned properties to make it through the coming winter.

For those staying in the burn area, frigid temperatures, snow and bone-chilling wind will make an already isolated existence even more challenging.

Fueled by record drought, heat and fierce winds, the wildfire raged through Rist and Poudre canyons overnight June 9, displacing hundreds of canyon residents, killing Old Flowers Road resident Linda Steadman, and wiping out dozens of homes, businesses and a fire station. Unpredictable weather and winds spread the blaze in almost every direction, creating havoc for firefighters and spreading a thick, heavy smoke over much of Larimer County.

While many Rist and Poudre canyon residents awaited word on their homes, hundreds more residents in Glacier View's 9th, 10th and 12th filings were evacuated, but few believed the fire would ever jump the Poudre River and into this mountain subdivision

35 miles northwest of Fort Collins.

On June 22, windblown embers pushed the fire across the Poudre, lighting up the 12th filing and licking parts of the 9th in Glacier View Meadows before the wind changed direction to blow the fire east into the already burned Hewlett Gulch area, stopping the blaze cold. When all was said and done, 259 homes were reduced to rubble.

But as the disaster relief distribution center at Foothills Mall prepares to close Wednesday, there are some signs that life is returning to normal.

The Mayburys, like many others, were underinsured, and can't afford to walk away from the money they have invested in the property, PJ Maybury said. For those displaced by the fire, it may be a new normal, but the sound of construction is a welcome sign that everything, eventually, will be OK again.

Though they talked about starting over elsewhere, "this is home," she said. "The view has changed a little bit but the sun still comes up on the same side of the lot and goes down on the same side of the lot. And those mountains are still there."

The gradual getting used to life on the blackened hillside is now the Mayburys' lot. Things were going fine when they moved the trailer on to the property, until they tore out the foundation of their former home.

"I had to mourn the loss of that house all over again, PJ Maybury said. "We built the foundation ourselves, we poured the slab ... it was like a final goodbye to the house."

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